It's pretty hard to believe that this chill, beach-inspired cocktail bar is located in one of Sathorn’s most vibrant and congested side streets. Ku Thai Bar takes up space on the second floor of Franco-Thai eatery Ku Tai on Suan Plu. (The names should be taken as homonyms and not an extension of the other.) “We have always wanted to open a cocktail bar with the name Ku but the name has been taken by another watering hole in Old Bangkok,” says the owner Phanida Slavetpan. “So we simply added Thai after Ku [which means ‘I’ or ‘me’ in Thai] as we wanted to focus on Thai spirits and local ingredients.”
The bar’s décor aims to take you on a beach holiday within the city in a rather ramshackle setting festooned with palm-tree imprinted wallpapers, kitschy woven furniture and tribal-patterned pillows. The entire bar is bereft of airconditioning, but there are enough electric fans to ease up the heat or even to stimulate a beach breeze.
The bar takes pride in using only Thai spirits and local produce to create a set of refreshing seaside-inspired tipples. Coco Palm (B370), a lighter version of the piña colada, mixes Phraya Rum with pineapple juice, lime juice and coconut milk. Thai-produced tea is the main component in concoctions like Ku Thai Pearl (B370), which combines pomegranate tea-infused gin with lemon and honey, and Tea & Tan (B370), a mix of Oriental tea-infused vodka and pomelo juice. Green Smoke (B350) is recommended for those who like their cocktails strong and heady, mixing Thai brandy Meridian V.S.O.P. with green tea-infused rum.
Enjoy your drinks with bar chow like the Pinto Set (B299), a sizeable Thai-style bento box that includes pork larb, grilled pork neck and pork sausage, or shrimp sashimi with spicy dipping sauce (B180).
Ku Thai Bar is actually a nomadic, pop-up project that intends to location-hop every few months. The bar will stay put in Suan Plu until February and will move to a new location with a completely new theme.
